Third Pole Environment

T P E

YAO Tandong

17/10/2019 The Third Pole refers to and its surroundings. It covers 5 million km2 in area with an elevation higher than 4000m by average, its behavior impacts more than 2 billion people. The Third Pole is also called the Asian Water Tower

Tianshan The Pamirs mountain

Kunlun Altun Mountains Qilian Karakorum Mountain Mountain Tanggula Mountain Mount Kailash Nyenchen Tanglha Qinling Mountains Mountains The Third Pole Environment (TPE) program

Tandong Yao () TPE entered UNESCO-UNEP- Lonnie Thompson (USA) SCOPE flagship program in Volker Mosbrugger (Germany) 2011 Deliang Chen (Sweden) David Madlen (ICIMOD) TPE workshops

th 6 TPE Workshop The 4th Third Pole Environment (TPE) Workshop May 16-18, Columbus, USA April 1-3, 2013, Dehradun, India STEP-TPE-Pan-TPE and TPEC

North Pole

Third Pole TPEC Pan-TPE PAN THIRD POLE ENVIRONMENT South Pole STEP Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research Major topics

Westerly-monsoon Anthropogenic impacts interaction and its and environmental security impact

Asian Water Tower Plateau uplifting and changes and their far-reaching impact impact

Resource and energy Ecosystems and eco- STEP assessment security

Ecological buffer Environment and disaster capacity and its optimization

Biodiversity Green development conservation and pathways sustainable use Major focus

Focusing on water, ecosystem and human activity, particularly on changing Asian Water Towers and their impacts and on adaptation strategy with the cooperation between scientists and policy makers

Urgent critical questions for Asian Water Tower

• How much water stored in and flew out from Asian Water Towers? • How do the conversions between vapor-solid-liquid water phases impact environment in China and Asia or even the world? • How to improve the function of the water and ecology buffer to promote the sustainability of China and Asia or beyond? Earth system science approach of ground/space observing networks and modeling intergration TPE has an international alliances with scientists throughout the world

CAS Overseas Centers TPE global networks

Central Asia Sweden Beijing Kathmandu UAS Germany Myanmar Kathmandu Kenya Sri Lanka TPE and PAN-TPE have linkage with International Programs and Organizations

世界气象组织 WMO 联合国环境署 UNEP

International Programs International programs on on scientific themes regional environment TPE is a partnership of WMO in High Mountain Weather and Climate TPE is jointly addressing global climate change issues through UNEP networks

UN SPBF TPE is coordinating CORDEX Flagship Pilot Studies (FPS) on high resolution modelling over the Third Pole Upcoming TPE events

October 29-30, WMO High Mountain Summit, Geneva

November 29-30, TPE Workshop, Frankfurt

Tandong Yao, Lonnie Thompson, Volker Mosbruggger, Deliang Chen

are organizing and coordinating Thank you!